Insecurity in Cyberspace

This is not one of those topics that makes you feel better initially. In IoT Security we looked at how the emerging IoT world needed to protect itself against attacks. This is a different problem to pure Software Security which has its own challenges.

They have also put together an infographic that speaks to the The Internet of Insecure Things and I am reproducing a low resolution version here with their permission. You can get a full resolution version by registering at the Barr Group website.

The Internet Of Insecure Things

It speaks to where the insecure aspects come from. As usual, better Embedded Software Development practice leads to better and more secure products.

Disruptive Innovation

Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma showed us that the business drivers of our current customers blinds us to emerging but currently unsuitable technology that eventually takes over our market. This has led to a focus on Innovation that looks to be disruptive as its primary goal. And I have come to the conclusion that this has hampered our attempts at Innovation. We have set the bar too high. And this isn’t what Innovation was about. Just a way of looking at a specific type of Innovation.

In my article on Light Cameras I covered a new concept in camera’s developed by Dr Rajiv Laroia who co-founded Light. The Light L16 is a new camera concept using multiple lenses and cameras to fuse a composite image given focal ranges and exposure ranges not possible in conventional cameras. An excellent example of disrupting innovation. and also an excellent example of The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Announced in 2016 and expected to be ready that year it was not shipping until mid 2017. Why? Because it is hard to do and the ASIC development was late and the core idea of doing the fusion inside the camera in real time is proving harder than expected and data transfers are too slow (they are transferring 16 cameras worth of data for 1 picture) and focus isn’t good enough and low light performance also isn’t good enough and did I mention it is hard!

I’m still impressed with the idea. But like all true disruptions it isn’t good enough when it first launches. Look at the modern DSLR. It shows you the picture you will take, it is seconds from taking the picture to being able to look at it. Focus is multi zone and you can decide how sharp or soft you want it and where. Auto exposure can handle high backlight shots and a wide range of light conditions. Fantastic. And decade in the making. The Light L16 isn’t surpassing it yet but you can see the trajectory and the camera of the future shows its potential now in what they are doing.

I’m also impressed with the open approach they are taking with customers. In a recent article Dr Rajiv Laroia explained why the Light L16 was delayed, how they were supporting their customers and what the plan for addressing the issues is. An excellent example of Collaboration with their customers rather than bunkering down defensively.

This still looks like it will be a success. It will just take longer than any of us expected.

IEEE

IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is the largest professional engineering body in the world and has a world wide focus. I am a Senior Member and have always found it worthwhile. In the days before the Internet was as useful as it is now, they were the best source of regular and up to date news about technology advances and what was happening in the world of technology.

IEEE – Advancing Technology for Humanity

IEEE Collabratec

IEEE Collabratec

A great example of this is the IEEE Collabratec platform. This fosters Collaboration over a very wide range of topics including ethics. I’m a regular contributor and was very pleased to see the figures for the its use in 2017. Check out the graphic below. Click on it to get a larger version that will be easier to read.

5G

5G is expected to launch ahead of schedule with phone manufacturers supporting it toward the end of 2018 and carriers in 2019. It will need a lot more base stations so one of the challenges is how much equipment will be needed for field deployments, and where the workforce to do it will come from.

Safe Water from Air

This class of product has been speculated about for a while. So it was great to see a viable example on show. It includes a solar panel to create the energy needed to extract the water. I found it a little odd that the target market for this is the US. The greatest need is in the developing world.

Zero Mass – Clean Water From Air

The breakthrough idea is using materials that absorb water then heating them to get the water released. Electronic approaches up to now have used cooling which require a lot more energy.

The business model idea is to decentralise water. Like all new technologies, there are a lot of ecosystem issues to be worked through. The great thing is this can be an emergency response option when disasters create a clean water crisis.

Cars

You would think self-driving cars would get the biggest wrap, but it was the first remote controlled car on public roads that got the attention. Phantom demoed driving from 500km away. The biggest issue here is still latency so this one probably con’t go mainstream until 5G rolls out.

Robots

Blockchain

I’m including this one because there is a lot of hype and the computing power to use it make it unusable for many applications. But like AI, the increasing power of hand held computing devices like mobile phones means that we are approaching the point where this can be done in devices, or done in the cloud. For the latter, we need high speed data and low latency. Then the phone can offload the most difficult or memory hungry operations to a cloud service and get the results back. This will open up a lot of new opportunities.

IoT Change Catalyst

The Internet of Things, or IoT, continues to break new ground. Although there are still many things to be worked out, there is no doubt it will create new opportunities and enable value propositions previously unimaginable.

So I was please when Garrick Stanford from RS Components sent me an infographic looking at the way the Internet of Things will drive change. Here is his introduction.

‘Sometime ago we discussed exactly what the internet of things is. Well here we’re going to take a closer look at how it is going to change your life – and how that has started already. More and more technology and everyday devices and tools are now connected to the internet – think about your phone and TV, for instance. But here we’ll examine how the amount of connected devices that we use is going to hugely increase and how that will affect our lives.’

Intellectual Property

The first step is to determine what Intellectual Property you actually have. This is usually broader than you initially think.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Audit

So before you can have an Intellectual Property Strategy, you will need to do an Intellectual Property Audit or IP Audit. IP Australia has an excellent guide to how to do this at Auditing Your IP so if you haven’t done this already, I recommend you read through the guide.

IP Australia

An example of an IP Audit is shown at World Intellectual Property Organisation at IP Audit – A “How to” Guide. So to see an IP Audit outcome. Check that out.

World Intellectual Property Organisation

Intellectual Property Strategy

Now you have identified your Intellectual Property using an IP Audit, you can put together your Intellectual Property Strategy or IP Strategy. How to go about this depends on a lot of factors. Some examples are:

US Patents have moved from priority given to “first to invent”, to priority given to “first to file”. So filing early is now critical if you want protection or even the right to deploy your own invention which predated a patent from a competitor.

Different domains have different rules for determining patent infringement. For instance, The EU see protecting the idea as important and not just the specific wording of the patent.

If you want to defend a patent, you will need to fund the defense.

Trademarks get more respect than patents so use trademarks.

Trademarks potentially have unlimited life whereas patents and registered designs have finite life.

But you will have many other IP Resources including Trade Secrets which also potentially have infinite life.

You also need to have “Freedom to Operate“. This means your new invention could infringe someone else’s IP Rights. So it is also necessary to check that there isn’t a Patent, Trademark or Registered Design that you would be in breach of infringing if you proceeded. And if you are, you might want to look at whether you could license the technology. A recent change in IP Law means that a Patent holder cannot be unreasonable in restraining your business opportunity, and particularly if they are not competing with you, and especially if they are primarily acquiring and sitting on patents, or patent trolling.

The general steps of an IP Strategy are:

Decide who in your organisation will take responsibility for IP

And what you will do in house, and where you will get an IP Lawyer involved

Electric Vehicles

A lot of focus is going into Hybrid and All Electric Cars. Tesla being the most well known example though there are many other successful players in this market. However the Electric Aircraft or Electric Plane or E-Plane is moving along a bit slower.

E-Planes

At its core, the E-Plane is a harder design challenge. You have to address a lot of different issues at once and many are in direct contradiction with each other. A short list of top competing requirements is:

So this looks like it still has a fair was to go before large scale commercial adoption is possible. However we have definitely reached the point where short range and ultralight E-Planes are both technically and financially ready for market.

Electric Vehicles

This is a post I started 6 years ago and decided not to publish. Since then things have changed a lot so here goes.

The History of Electric Vehicles

The Electric Vehicle has been around for a long time. The new push to Electric Vehicles is mostly being pushed by the belief that they will reduce carbon emissions. This really depends on where the power comes from, how efficient the motors are and how well the batteries work. Most studies prior to 2011 have shown that unless a substantial amount of the power comes from renewable energy then it is likely the Electric Vehicle will generate more pollution than a petrol vehicle.

Electric Vehicles began a long time before the petrol vehicle was the norm and even way before Vanguard made the first mass produced Electric Vehicle in the 1970s.

So what happened to the Electric Vehicle? The challenge today is still the same, the Battery. We really need a better solution. Which is where my original post stopped.

Guess what? It seems to have happened.

Tesla et al

So enter Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. His purpose is to take petrol off the road so they have done some pretty innovative things including opening up their patent database so anyone can use their technology with their permission.

Tesla

And of course Nissan, Toyota, Honda and many others are putting Electric Vehicles front a center in their product lines now.

With improvements in energy density storage and reducing costs for high capacity batteries we are approaching a time when Battery Electric Vehicles are the better choice for the environment, even when charged with electricity derived from fossil fuels. Studies show that there are more Emissions from the manufacture of a Electric Vehicle, but this is made up for in 1 year of operating emissions improvements and over the course of the Electric Vehicle’s life, Global Warming Emissions are halved. This assumes a 50mpg (US based study) petrol vehicle is used for the comparison. This equates to 21.3Kpl or 4.7L/100Km so this is as realistic comparison with a high efficiency petrol or diesel vehicle.

What a big different 6 years makes.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars

So how are Hydrogen Fuel Cell based cars progressing? Calculations are that it will be roughly 3 times less efficient that a Battery Electric Vehicle. And extracting the H2 also requires energy. So H2 is an energy storage source. It is hard to store and manage and so the infrastructure costs are also high. So it is hard to do. The plus is that you don’t consume any fossil fuels in the process if you use some of the new solar based extraction mechanisms so although there are big drawbacks, there are also big benefits. The following video covers the territory well including some commentary from Elon Musk toward the end.

Let’s look at another perspective which is more optimistic.

So the infrastructure just isn’t there. So it looks like Battery Electric Vehicles are still the way to go. But the advantages are big enough that the debate will continue. And it is interesting that we have multiple fuel types in use simultaneously including Petrol (gasoline), Diesel, LPG, Alcohol, Battery Electric, Hydrogen, Biodiesel, compressed air, coal, wood and others.

The big advantages for Hydrogen are:

longer operating range than battery alone but not as much as petrol/diesel/LPG

no harmful emissions when running, the same as Battery Electric Vehicles and a big improvement over petrol/diesel/LPG

Time will tell. I should put a diary entry into my calendar for 6 years time and do another comparison.